12 I am referring here to Raymond Williamss theories of residual, emergent, and dominant practices (Citation1977: 1217). Several scholars have discussed how DIY methods of music production result in lo-fi (low fidelity) sounds and aesthetics that reflect a DIY materiality of scarcity, independence, self-reliance, and amateurism (Fonarow Citation2006: 3950; Kruse Citation2010: 633). Reciprocally, these local participants (i.e. People from various N and NE Portland houses are folding cassette cases for the Goof Punx festival compilation, while a music jam session is happening at the same time. Thats what really contributes to that communal feeling you get at shows. While it is still a great spot to enjoy cheap beer in a low-key setting, the Saloon is now best known as an intimate venue to enjoy some of the best jazz and blues in the city. do-it-together (seattle diy.com Citation2009: 1). As regards music, these processes emerged somehow organically through social and economic relationships established between DIY musicians and organisers. To learn about our use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please see our Cookie Policy. It doesnt feel as a community so much when you have a show, when a bands a bunch of millionaires, and you have a bunch of people that just idolize them. All rights reserved. Taylor Citation2016: 15476). In this way, they create alternative DIY systems that co-constitute capitalist ones, while simultaneously being co-constituted by them. According to cultural anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo, the San Francisco music scene was "a workshop for progressive soul", with the radio station KDIA in particular playing a role in showcasing the music of acts like Sly and the Family Stone.[20]. In addition, factors that shape more egalitarian music practices and sounds can be diverse. At the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, Bay Area groups performed from the same stage as established and fast-rising musical groups and well-known individual artists from the U.S., the UK, and even India. Founded by the Ambassador of the American Songbook, Michael Feinstein, Feinsteins at the Nikko presents top Broadway artists, cabaret singers, and todays best interpreters of the Great American Songbook. It features a house Hammond B-3 organ, played by the areas best organists, along with a huge record collection. Culton and Holtzman Citation2010; Hannerz Citation2015: 128). The historical building is large enough to comfortably accommodate more than 1,000 guests but small enough to ensure an intimate experience no matter where you watch the show. This is further emphasised when there are no financial profits generated for performers or intermediaries of these shows, and DIY spaces and modes of organisation are employed in the process including the exchange of venues, items, favours, and equipment and participants not only symbolically but also palpably experience the affective intimacy of the DIY community (Verbu Citation2018, Citation2021; Garcia Citation2020). 19 See also Jennings Citation1998; Chrysagis Citation2017; Threadgold Citation2017; Bennett Citation2018; Garland Citation2019; Seman Citation2019; Holt Citation2020: chapters 4 and 5; Pearson Citation2020: 183, 185. For example, Gilman incorporates all-ages, non-alcohol, and safer space policiesFootnote5 alongside volunteer, collective, and consensus-based approaches to organisation. The new sound, which melded many musical influences, was perhaps heralded in the live performances of the Jefferson Airplane (from 1965 on), who put out an LP record earlier than nearly all the other new bands (August 1966). participation]. I am also thankful to both anonymous reviewers for their astute comments, as well as to Henry Stobart for his generous help with the editing process. For example, in the Glitterdome house in NE Portland, these included sharing, borrowing, and exchanging items, goods and even spaces between houses and participants, be it food, free box items (clothes, shoes, books), tapes, or music equipment. Their performances contrasted with the "standard three-minute track" that had become a clich of the pop-music industry, due to the requirements of AM radio, to the sound capacity of the 45 RPM record, and to the limited potentials of many pop songs and song treatments. The San Francisco sound refers to rock music performed live and recorded by San Francisco-based rock groups of the mid-1960s to early 1970s. American DIY venues and performers also form a translocal network of reciprocity, which is created through the reciprocal relation of playing and booking each others shows across the US (and beyond). On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. A seminal venue in this regard is Gilman 924 (known also only as Gilman) in Berkeley, California. Monterey, California is about 120 road miles south of San Francisco. According to an announcer for a TV show that Ralph J. Gleason hosted: "In his syndicated newspaper column, Mr. Gleason has been the foremost interpreter of the sounds coming out of what he calls 'the Liverpool of the United States.' However, not all DIY bands ascribe to the same idea of DIY while many see it as an ideological principle to live by, others regard it as a pragmatic strategy that enables them to acquire skill, shows, and social connections in the beginning stages of their musical careers.Footnote15 Nevertheless, not all independent cultural activities should be seen as proto-markets (Toynbee Citation2000: 2532), but instead, as heterogeneous assemblages of diverse, non-market and proto-market, possibilities. Additionally, there are numerous Jazz Festivalsthroughout the Bay Area during warmer months. The San Francisco bands' music was everything that AM-radio pop music wasn't. Figure 1. The light and charming One Hundred Men and a Girl, from 1937, starred Deanna Durbin as the daughter of an unemployed trombonist and the conductor Leopold Stokowski, whose character almost accidentally finds himself conducting an orchestra of the unemployed. Pier 23 Cafe is a time-honored restaurant and bar located right on the Embarcadero and San Francisco Bay. On the one hand, American DIY participants embrace independence, collectivism, and reciprocity as constitutive parts of the DIY economy, and foster them as rituals of decomoditization that enhance the symbolic and affective value of DIY shows. The bohemian predecessor of the hippie culture in San Francisco was the "Beat Generation" style of coffee houses and bars, whose clientele appreciated literature, a game of chess, music (in the forms of jazz and folk style), modern dance, and traditional crafts and arts like pottery and painting. 11 See, for example, Forns, Lindberg, and Sernhede Citation1995; Berger Citation1999: 67; Toynbee Citation2000: 111, 112; Moore Citation2014a. (Richard the Roadie, in Biel Citation2012: 28, 29), Thus, many DIY participants accept the limits of DIY reciprocity and espouse a more independent and autonomous, small-time or ethical capitalism (Biel Citation2012: 28, 29). This kind of diversion from the capitalist market economy and experience is vividly expressed by DIY participant James from Davis, California: [at DIY house shows] we are experiencing music outside of the [dominant] modes of exchange that we are used to, even if we still pay donation money [] For me, something that exists outside the normal form of exchange you go to a venue, bar making money, going buying drinks; this [DIY show] is much more visceral, conducive to real interchange between people. (Personal communication, 28 February 2012; see Figure 6; emphasis in original). The various shows of the tour were put together by friends of the band, friends of their friends, and by people for whom the band had previously organised shows in Portland. [13] San Francisco historian Charles Perry recalled that in Haight-Ashbury, "You could party hop all night and hear nothing but Rubber Soul",[14] and that "More than ever the Beatles were the soundtrack of the Haight-Ashbury, Berkeley and the whole circuit. (Personal communication, 28 February 2012). However, there are also other ways in which DIY people enter into the relationship with capitalist modes of production. Therefore, it is important to realise that the sum of all the aspects and dimensions of American DIY scenes comprise a complex and contradictory socio-cultural assemblage with its own potential for agency and affect. Further, DIY venues also foster reciprocal relation with their performers and audiences. [5] According to writer Douglas Brinkley, celebrated author Hunter S. Thompson, one of the Bay Area cultural-scene boosters, was a big early fan of the group: "Thompson extolled the sonic energy of the Jefferson Airplane as it pulsed around the California locales that nursed the psychedelic era"[6]. Numerous scholars have discussed the coexistence of different economic systems within particular cultures and societies, mainly juxtaposing capitalism against alternative economic systems, such as a sustenance economy or gift-economy.Footnote16 While these latter systems may emerge as alternatives or in opposition to the dominant capitalist mode, many analysts also highlight the co-dependent and co-constitutive dimensions of this relationship. Other DIY participants I interviewed talked about similar approaches included in the roster of DIY reciprocal and collective activities. We had a friend coming around named Peter [], he would come in and just do all of our dishes and leave, or hed come with a gallon jug of olive oil, he would just come and give us stuff. Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? (Personal communication, 23 January 2011). Marx Citation1887). Lesh had developed his style on the foundation of having studied classical, brass-band, jazz, and modernist music on the violin and later the trumpet.[10]. However, the poles of reciprocal vs capitalist economy (and use vs exchange value), as reflected also in the organisation of shows (egalitarian vs hierarchical), and in the DIY aesthetics (support vs quality), are not so much in opposition as they are in dialogue with each other within the American DIY scenes and communities (as a dialogue between the forms of emergent and residual practices, respectively). Permission will be required if your reuse is not covered by the terms of the License. The Dead Kennedys are often seen as one of the most influential hardcore punk bands of the 1980s, instrumental in the rebellion against the hippie movement of the preceding decades. Jennings Citation1998), At a certain level if you are accepted into a community, you shouldnt make more than a liveable wage [through DIY-related small businesses]. Your guide to one of San Francisco's biggest LGBTQ community events outside of Pride. The US DIY communities I encountered during my fieldwork, most of which at least partially identify as DIY communities and scenes, utilised a DIY approach partly for ideological purposes, as they strived for creative and social autonomy. Dedicated in 2016, the statue signifies the citys ongoing love affair with the song, the music, and the musicians who make it. (Cometbus Citation2002). While this may not involve bonds of calculated economic exchange or one-for-one favours, it nonetheless creates a social bond (debt to the scene) and thus also sustains a community. Therefore, in this article, I argue that on one level American DIY participants discursively reject capitalism and materially constitute alternative DIY economic systems of reciprocity, but on another they become entangled through their everyday lives with capitalist practices and worlds. This is how DIY participants themselves, in this case, DIY zine writer and publisher Tom Jennings, describe this process: Bands selling records at shows arent amassing capital to be used later to control more money but probably to buy beer, a T-shirt from the other band, gas to drive to the next show with, and if theyre lucky, rent. A whole society, with its own economic . DIY economics of reciprocity, collective participation, and DIY practice, DIY tensions and transitions between reciprocal and capitalist economic systems, https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2023.2180050, https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/the-paradox-of-life-affirming-death-traps/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gBcxR8NPUw, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health. Hence, DIY participants often repair, reuse, and repurpose discarded music equipment (Flood Citation2016), or they utilise scrap materials for DIY production. Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: A whole society, with its own economic system: the reciprocal and capitalist configurations of American DIY music scenes, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic, Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value, Noise Records as Noise Culture: DIY Practices, Aesthetics, and Trades, Conceptualizing the Relationship Between Youth, Music, and DIY Careers: A Critical Overview, A Sense of Togetherness: Music Promotion and Ethics in Glasgow, The Growth and Disruption of a Free Space: Examining a Suburban Do It Yourself (DIY) Punk Scene, Volunteering, the Market, and Neoliberalism, Feeling Pain/Making Kin in the Brooklyn Noise Music Scene, Feeling the Vibe: Sound, Vibration, and Affective Attunement in Electronic Dance Music Scenes, Amiguismo: Capitalism, Sociality, and the Sustainability of Indie Music in Santiago, Chile, Diverse Economies: Performative Practices for Other Worlds, The Anatomy of a Dumpster: Abject Capital and the Looking Glass of Value, Post-Punks Attempt to Democratize the Music Industry: The Success and Failure of Rough Trade, Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music Genre, Do It Yourselfand the Movement Beyond Capitalism, Value, Waste, and the Built Environment: A Marxian Analysis, Performing the Common Good: Volunteering and Ethics in Non-State Crime Prevention in South Africa, Local Identity and Independent Music Scenes, Online and Off, Punk Positif: The DIY Ethic and the Politics of Value in the Indonesian Hardcore Punk Scene, The Logics at Work in the New Cultural Industries, Postmodernism and Punk Subculture: Cultures of Authenticity and Construction, Break on Through: The Counterculture and the Climax of American Modernism, Accession and Association: The Effect of European Integration and Neoliberalism on Rising Inequality and Kin-neighbor Reciprocity in the Republic of Macedonia, Seeing Sapa: Reading a Transnational Marketplace in the Post-Socialist Cityscape, If There Isnt Skyscrapers, Dont Play There! Rock Music Scenes, Regional Touring, and Music Policy in Australia, Punk Rock Entrepreneurship: All-Ages DIY Music Venues and the Urban Economic Landscape, Neoliberalisms Moral Overtones: Music, Money, and Morality at Thailands Red Shirt Protests, Creativity, Precarity, and Illusio: DIY Cultures and Choosing Poverty, Theory and Ethnography of Affective Participation at DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Shows in the US. For example, multiple north (N) and northeast (NE) Portland DIY houses joined together as a local DIY community to co-organise the second Gathering of Goof Punx festival in April 2012. Appadurai uses the term tournaments of value to refer to those, often calculative, movements of paths and diversions that actors instigate in order to negotiate the value of circulating commodities (Citation1986: 20, 21). "[16] Women, in a few cases, enjoyed an equal status with men as stars in the San Francisco rock scenebut these few instances signaled a shift that has continued in the U.S. music scene. It was associated with the counterculture community in San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district, during these years. Aaron is the Manager of Digital & Social Media Marketing at San Francisco Travel. TheHotel Nikko in Union Squarehouses the eponymous Feinsteins. SCRAP) that co-constitute late capitalist circulation of money and commodities (Whiteley Citation2011; Giles Citation2014). Enjoy a show and a cocktail at B-Side, the lounge in the SFJAZZ Center. 3 The research included several years of fieldwork in Davis, CA; nine months in Portland, OR; five days in Washington, DC; and 14 days each in Olympia, WA, Los Angeles, and Oakland, CA. They contain freely available discarded items that DIY participants desire to redirect into reuse by other DIY participants, who visit or pass by their houses. Steve Miller (who formed the Steve Miller Band) was from Wisconsin, by way of Chicago and New York City while bandmate Boz Scaggs originally called Texas home. And its time to show that creativity is still valued over money. Experience the mark he left on the city. American DIY participants often talk about their own economic system, support-system, or self-sustaining trade and barter economy (Cometbus Citation2002; Danielson Citation2004; Debies-Carl Citation2014: 81, 14461; Hannerz Citation2015: 127, 128; Farrow Citation2020: 246). Phil Lesh, bassist with the Grateful Dead, furthered this sound. I am immensely grateful to all of the participants of this research, for accepting me in their spaces and scenes, and for their invaluable insights on the matters discussed herein. However, Scott also clarifies that DIY reciprocity is not about direct one-for-one reciprocation but can apply to anybody (somebody else), as long as participants are dedicated to sustaining the scene (keep the energy moving). Since my research mostly covers years 20104, and therefore does not address any recent changes in the scene (e.g., due to COVID-19 or other factors), the ethnographic findings in this article will be discussed using the past tense. 2023 Hyderabad Media House Limited/The Hans India. And, if you go to a baseball game atOracle Park, there is nothing like hearing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco played after a Giants victory. DIY zines, comic books, and blogs from the whole US).Footnote3 This particular DIY culture is an outgrowth of late 1970s British and US punk culture, which later expanded into more transnational and heterogeneous scenes that today also encompass aspects of indie rock, experimental music and certain singer-songwriters.Footnote4 It also has ties to other similar formations, most particularly 1960s counterculture, and various historical and contemporary anarchist, feminist, and sustainability movements (cf. February is Black History Month that celebrates the contributions and present-day existence of a community that remain unapparelled in the collective victory of humankind. Celebrate San Francisco's deep-rooted black history at these music venues that have hosted some of music's most legendary black artists. Moreover, they are also seen to engage in rituals of decomoditization by diverting capitalist products into enclaved zones of DIY spaces and shows. Thats awesome! At San Francisco's music venues, new-age artists share the same stages as some of music's most legendary black artists. Located in the Fillmore District, Sheba Piano Lounge is an intimate bar and lounge where you can enjoy live music nightly to go with some of the areas best Ethiopian cuisine. "[15] In San Francisco, musical influences came in from not only London, Liverpool and Manchester, but also included the bi-coastal American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, the Chicago electric blues scene, the soul music scenes in Detroit, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals, jazz styles of various eras and regions. By 1967, fresh and adventurous improvisation during live performance (which many heard as being epitomized by the Grateful Dead and by the "cross-talk" guitar work of Moby Grape) was one characteristic of the San Francisco sound. [9] This questing bass quality has been wryly characterized as a "roving" (rather than the conventional "stay-at-home") style. By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. However, it is also possible to identify more hierarchical and individualist practices and outcomes in contemporary DIY music-making (Verbu Citation2021: 189; see below). Jimi Hendrix lived in San Francisco in the 1960s and became one of the iconic musical talents of the Summer of Love. It is important to note here that any act of gift-giving (for instance, organising shows) is always also an act that ties individuals to community. For example, in her manual for booking DIY shows, Beck Levy (2013) an artist and musician who used to organise DIY shows in Washington, DC notes that among the bad reasons for organising shows is so that other bands will feel obligated to book your band in their cities. Brasses and reeds, such as trumpets and saxophones were rarely used, unlike in contemporary R&B and soul bands and some of the white bands from the U.S. East Coast (e.g., Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago). 7 For more on DIY touring in the US, and the notion of translocal reciprocity, see Verbu Citation2021 (chapter 8). Jai Milx performing at her house, Glitterdome, in Portland, 4 February 2012. Even if participants endeavour to detach DIY music making from the capitalist motives of larger society, traces of the dominant economy persist within DIY scenes. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. We use cookies to improve your website experience. Finally, this study highlights the value of a dialectical scholarship that approaches social phenomena, such as music scenes, as constituted in contradictory and non-deterministic ways, which operate on multiple levels, and which are riven with socio-cultural difference. there is a diversity of possible causal factors that extend beyond the influence of the DIY system), as it is also implicated in the examples above. 1 Free boxes are often found in DIY and punk houses, or on the sidewalks next to them. Until they do away with capitalism we wont be able to escape it, but we can put the money back into our own hands. He has lived in San Francisco for over 9 years and has worked in Travel & Tourism for over 7 of those. By being discarded, they often either create scarcity and consequently contribute to market demand and supply patterns, or they enter alternative economic business models (small, grassroots, sustainable, eco, ethical, and/or community-oriented niche business entities, e.g. Quality often does not matter as much as community and fucking family and the ways, like being emotional and playing [i.e. Both Grace Slick (singing with Jefferson Airplane) and Joplin (singing initially with Big Brother & the Holding Company) gained a substantial following locally and, before long, across the country.[17]. Powered by hocalwire.com, We use cookies for analytics, advertising and to improve our site. Baumgarten Citation2012: v, 137). This is exemplified below by Portland DIY participant Aaron Scott, who discusses the relations of reciprocity between performers and organisers of shows, and between the individual and the scene. This can include anything from the production, distribution, and promotion of music and arts, and self-organisation of spaces and concerts, to other social and daily activities such as making food and clothing, repairing or remodelling vehicles, and social and political self-organising (Holtzman, Hughes, and Van Metre Citation2007; Wehr Citation2012; Debies-Carl Citation2014). Learn the dynamic history of San Francisco's Angel Island, the gateway for approximately 175,000 Chinese immigrants in the 1900s. Live music performances and music records/cassettes as standardised commodities are in this way diverted from their regular paths in the market economy to an alternative economic regime of value, often through the incorporation of alternative exchange systems (cf. Thereby, various goods and articles can, for example, be temporarily or permanently diverted from the capitalist market into enclaved non-capitalist zones, where they are often voided of market value while they simultaneously gain in symbolic value. What is gained in this way is an experience of intimate and affective community (real interchange), creativity, active participation, and autonomy, and also a sense of active and productive opposition to a presumably non-effective and exploitative capitalist economic and social model existing in the larger society. Collective reciprocity is also manifested in the structure of shows, where DIY organisers and performers often reject the hierarchical notion of openers and headliners (Verbu Citation2021: 219). The beatnik thing was black, cynical, and cold. But well known stars of rock & roll "were being called fifties primitives" by this time. "[4] San Francisco's dearly departed nightclubs and music venues. Drawing on Arjun Appadurais theories of value and commodity (1986), alongside other authors who examine the co-existence of different economic systems, I chart how DIY practitioners tactically navigate the boundaries between these reciprocal and capitalist economic systems and worlds. [18] Donahue was uniquely qualified, being savvy and enthusiastic about jazz, R&B, Soul, and ethnic music, besides the then-current rock music. Ralph Gleason became one of the founders of what would become the rock-scene fan journal, Rolling Stone. Through long term ethnographic study of local and translocal DIY scenes, including shows, spaces, and touring practices, I reveal a plethora of reciprocal musical and extra-musical activities that enable the creation of alternative DIY worlds. American DIY shows similarly function as enclaved zones and rituals of decomoditization. Nevertheless, the system of general reciprocity also keeps these DIY boundaries open, as it works in a seemingly non-obligatory way, in which DIY individuals themselves decide how and when these debts should be reciprocated. Furthermore, alternative DIY socio-economic systems succeed in generating considerable symbolic, affective, material, and political value for DIY participants and scenes. But in live performance, the bands would often share their improvisatory zest by playing a given song or sequence for as long as five or six minutes, and occasionally for as long as half an hour. However, they were also often pressed into finding DIY alternatives for structural reasons, for example, because of the lack of appropriate public and non-commercial community spaces (Sorkin Citation2005; Lyle Citation2008: 2612), or due to age restrictions, barring people under the age of 21 from attending public concert spaces where alcohol is served (Stewart Citation2006, Citation2010). Coming of age in the San Francisco Bay Area, famed singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks gained her first performing experience there in the 1960s with Lindsey Buckingham and his band. Outdoor performances, often organized by the band members themselves and their friends, also played their part. This recycling approach is highlighted by Jai from Glitterdome house, in Portland: We make all merch[andise] by ourselves, we can cut costs by collecting shirts from [free] boxes, [or by] using SCRAP, which stands for School and Community Resource Action Project [local community store selling scrap materials], we can use that to get different materials for making our merch, that helps us so whenever we do make money from that, we can make money to put in our gas tank, to keep going, or to put out more records. In addition, I made multiple additional one-day trips to Oakland during my stay in Davis. (Aaron Scott, personal communication, 11 April 2012). Learn about our history and where to find it now, from festivals to clubs and bars. Moreover, he demonstrates the self-critical nature of this discourse, and the tendency among some American DIY participants to verbalise and theorise the specifics of this alternative (own) economic system. Local DIY scenes often work as collective efforts, achieved through reciprocal relations between the venues, houses and organisers that sustain them. Soon after, Ralph J. Gleason and Jann Wenner, based in San Francisco, established Rolling Stone magazine (first issue's date: November 1967). Furthermore, there exists a tension between these diverse activities within the DIY sphere, since more ideologically oriented DIY participants often foster a resentment towards more pragmatic and market-oriented DIY musicians. These included sharing of food and equipment among DIY houses, local and translocal exchange of venues, the system of free boxes (see Figure 1),Footnote1 donations at shows, and participatory organiser-performer-audience interactions practices that enabled the creation of alternative cultural DIY worlds, and which in turn informed DIY sounds and aesthetics. Furthermore, the ethnographic examples I have presented suggest that alternative DIY systems do not only exist at the level of utopian ideas, but also as innovative and extensive socio-cultural practices that materially integrate American DIY worlds, from micro to macro levels. Dylan from Glitterdome house, making a CD cover for their band Potsie (26 April 2012). Rather, the two interact in complex, contradictory, and co-determining ways, as well as operating on multiple levels: ranging from DIY rejection of the dominant system, or the creation of temporary DIY enclaves, to various forms of partial co-dependence (pragmatic, hybrid, lateral, or tacit co-dependence). (Oakes Citation2009: 51; emphasis added)Footnote10. 10 Iconic San Francisco Eats & Drinks That Every Visitor Must Try, Trip Idea: Take a Jimi Hendrix-Inspired San Francisco Trip, Little Known Facts About The Golden Gate Bridge, Everything You Need to Know About the Castro Street Fair, San Francisco Music Venues Rich in Black History, Where to See Jazz and Blues in San Francisco, History of Angel Island: The Ellis Island of the West.